Legion Tours of Duty

The new game mode, Tour of Duty, for Star Wars Legion was released a few weeks ago, and promised to add a new dimension to the game. The listed intent was to write your own Star Wars story, with unique characters and upgradable units. For our group, this was most closely equated to a Mordheim-style game, where each battle connects to the next and the armies fight for resources and advancement. Having played our first game, I think they have come close.

Coming out this Friday is our first battle report in the new format, Separatists vs Rebels. Josh and George were willing to be our first attempt at the new mechanics, and both created the requisite 600 army register and battle force. Other than some confusion on the mechanics, this was relatively painless. Tabletop Admiral makes it fairly easy to create the register, and you can then directly transfer over to the army build to select from your custom units.

Because we only had 600 points, we opted for the Recon ruleset, which put its own restrictions in. The battlefield is a small 3×3 board, units are limited to fewer counts, and mission selection is more restricted. Otherwise, it is a normal Legion game. This did make the field feel rather cramped but wasn’t too bad given the smaller unit counts. It did however require quite a bit of alterations in our normal video format.

As to the mechanics of Tour of Duty, I feel it was a mixed success. There was some confusion over the initial setup and lists, but that was more due to it being new than any actual issues. Once we got past that point, the game itself wasn’t really that different – at least not for the primary parts of the game. Where the impact started to be felt was near the tail end of the game, and the after effects.

We have found that most Legion games are decided by the end of round 3 in the current ruleset – one side or the other has gained a large margin of points, enough that it is not possible (or at least highly unlikely) for the victor to change. As a result, we tend to end the game at that point, both from a sense of speed but as well as to spare any hard feelings as remaining units are hunted down and eliminated. However, Tour of Duty specifies that all 5 turns must be played to utilize the mechanics – meaning that conceding early results in no experience or gains for your units (though it also means that they do not suffer casualties). For our games, that quickly devolves into a case of going defensive and retreating to hold what you have in the late turns, since anything aggressive has very little chance of success.

Tied into this is the post-game mechanics, which provides gains (experience) to all units that participated in the battle, as well as a bonus point for all units holding or securing objectives. In practice, by turn 3, if the battle is already decided – you can either chase after enemy units and risk losing additional units yourself, or you can retreat and secure your objectives, so that all units bundle up to maximize the rewards. Ultimately, this leads to rather anti-climactic final rounds in the game, as everyone moves apart from each other.

To compound this problem is the results and drawbacks. Each unit eliminated makes a casualty check on a black dice, and yes, sometimes can return to action with no ill effects. However, in 5 of 8 times, they suffer fairly severe drawbacks on all further battles (until resources are spent to clear them). Since many games result in a majority of units eliminated, and more than half return with injuries, your force fairly rapidly loses effectiveness.

The setback mechanic isn’t that big of a concern though – most of the issues can be resolved by spending supply points to heal, or to acquire a Medevac upgrade, or the unit can deal with the pain. They seem harsh but are not that unreasonable in the system. However, they are not really in line with the benefits gained from playing the game itself. The “reward” for playing is experience (used to unlock rank and special talents), and supply points. The reward for “winning” the battle however is functionally the same. Yes, you have a slightly higher chance at earning 3 instead of 2 supply points. But otherwise, the awards are the same, and both players can earn 2 or 3 supply points for playing a battle. Thus, the desire to push your forces in game to the end, despite casualties, just isn’t there. Why risk the drawbacks, when you can retreat, group up, and gain extra experience, but still gain the same post-game benefits? The risk/reward equation is off balance.

In my mind, the fix to this is to incentivize winning the battle. Initially I was thinking +1 experience for all units on the winning side – that at least pushes a bit towards fighting harder to win but doesn’t really counteract the predictability of the late game. Alternatively, a “kill point” rationale might work – a unit that eliminates another unit gains +1 experience for each unit eliminated. That would encourage gains and risks – risk drawbacks by being eliminated but perhaps take out one or two units with you but doesn’t quite mitigate simply sitting back at the objective and not taking the gamble.

A better compromise in my view would be a victory point reward – the more units eliminated, the more the army benefits. Initial thoughts would be for every 100 points of enemy units eliminated, score +1 experience for your army, to be assigned by choice, but no more than +2 to any given unit. Hypothetically, 2 600 pt armies meet, and they both destroy 300 pts of enemy units. Each commander assigns 3 experience to their units, with no more than 2 to any single unit, based on their own preferences. Then the usual game mechanics and processes kick in, with eliminated units rolling for setbacks, etc. Add to that a single +1 experience bonus for the winning General, as a free bonus for winning the battle itself, and now you have something that both sides can understand, encourages engaging the enemy, but still rewards in a meaningful way winning the game. And I don’t think that it would unjustly unbalance the rest of the mechanics.

Do you agree or disagree, or do you have alternative suggestions? If so, leave a comment and start the discussion. This is all theory crafting at this stage – for now our group has not made any modifications to the based mechanics and are continuing on exactly as written. Technically, we are asking all players to spend 1 SP on Active Recruiting after each match, but that is only because we want to actively reach the 1000+ range again for normal scale games.